Traditionally, centralized institutions have been used mainly for storing gold which belongs to different nations in the same location. When transferring assets from one nation to another, all that needs to be done is to simply transfer gold from the “pile” which belongs to the paying nation to the “pile” which belongs to the nation that is to receive the payment. The principles of centralized institutions greatly facilitates the processing of payments, and for this reason, there is an interest in using such centralized solutions for commodities other than gold, in principle for any kind of commodity or instrument that can be imagined in the financial market, e.g., bonds, shares, etc.
In such an “expanded” centralized system there would be a plethora of instruments. The gathering of all instruments in one place (physical or virtual) is advantageous for those using the system, e.g., issuers, investors, and the operator of the system. Such a system is referred to as a Centralized Securities Depository, abbreviated as CSD.
Each kind of financial instrument in such a system would be defined by attributes, which are specific for each individual instrument. According to contemporary solutions and systems, the attributes for each individual instrument comprised in a system are “hard coded”. Due to, inter alia, the vast amount of instruments which the system needs to be able to handle, this “hard coding” makes the system difficult and cumbersome to handle, for example, due to the fact that new financial instruments can appear in existing markets, or when it is desired to adapt the system to new markets, or exchange information between the markets.